AGRARIAN REVOLUTIONS OF THE PAST 25 



villeins, it seems that, within limits, it must be in 

 the affirmative. Many villeins fled, could not be 

 traced, and returned no more; and so acquired their 

 freedom. Others bought their manumission from 

 their lord by a sum of money. But three hundred 

 years later villeins still existed in England, though 

 their number gradually grew smaller and smaller, 

 until villeinage itself died out with the death of 

 the last villeins." 7 



Montague Fordham, in commenting on the re- 

 sults, says: "The Peasant Revolt was a remarkable 

 movement; never before or since has the English 

 peasantry combined on so large a scale or been so 

 well and successfully led. They were defeated by 

 a political ruse promises of freedom and reform, 

 only made to be repudiated at the first convenient 

 moment. The results were therefore slight in pro- 

 portion to the character of the rising." 8 



Seventy years later (1450) another peasant rising 

 occurred. This is known in history as Cade's Rebel- 

 lion. The cause is usually attributed to the personal 

 and misguided ambition of Jack Cade. "The fact 

 that the ostensible cause of this second outbreak," 

 says Gamier, "was a self-aggrandizement of Cade 

 must not induce us to conclude that it was less agra- 

 rian in its nature than that of Ball." 9 The Bill of 

 Petitions that resulted in the rebellion was a peas- 



*A History of the English Agricultural Labourer, Chapter I, 

 p. 28. 



8 A Short History of English Rural Life, Chapter IV, p. 62. 

 ' Annals of the British Peasantry, Chap. V, p. 62. 



